Democracy

Problems with Billionaire Philanthropy: The Global Justice Now Report on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

February 8, 2016
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Global Justice Now, a NGO based in the UK released a report on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), criticizing it on a number of reasons and questioning their overall positive contribution to society. The report relies solely on publicly available data and statements from experts and insiders of relevant fields. They criticize the BMGF for the following, prime reasons: Lack of democratic accountability and oversight despite being the 12th largest development aid donor Extensive support for an intensified role of multinational corporations worldwide Extensive support for GM research, including financing for GM PR Extensive support for intellectual property…

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Anatomy of the Deep State

March 5, 2014
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Many years ago Bill Moyers made a documentary on the Secret Government in the US, a scathing critique of the Executive Branch of that carries out secretive operations contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. In the video interview below, Moyers presents an updated version of this same phenomenon, called “the Deep State.” It’s a fascinating interview with government insider Mike Lofrgren, who has also written this related article for the Bill Moyers program. Here is the original Bill Moyers documentary on the Secret Government:

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The religion of capitalist economics

February 24, 2014
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In earlier posts we mentioned the Oxfam report entitled “The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all,” which outlined how the annual income of richest 100 people is enough to end global poverty four times over (i.e. while the annual net income of the world’s richest 100 billionaires is about $240 billion, the estimated cost of raising everyone worldwide above the $1.25 a day poverty line is about $66 billion). Recently Oxfam released another report, “Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality,” which maps the the general distribution of wealth on a global level.…

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Propaganda (documentary)

July 6, 2013
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The film “Propaganda” purports to be a film smuggled out of North Korea. The narrator claims that she was approached, while on holiday in South Korea, by two alleged North Korean defectors, who presented her with a DVD originating from North Korea, asking her to translate it and upload it to the internet. The film features a surprisingly accurate analysis of contemporary western media and society. It features quotes from many well-respected intellectuals and manages to connect the dots in a very clear fashion. It does not falsify information or statistics or take any text, audio, or video material out of…

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Why ‘I Have Nothing to Hide’ Is the Wrong Way to Think About Surveillance (article)

June 27, 2013
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The recent revelations by Edward Snowden of the global surveillance of internet communications by the American NSA was a vivid reminder of the need for everyone to think much more carefully about their online behavior. However, many people seem to regard Snowden’s revelations as interesting or curious but not startling. Such people seem to think that they would never be the target of US government surveillance or that, even if they were, there would be nothing to fear as they are law-abiding people. This article, written by Moxie Marlinspike for WIRED challenges these comfortable assumptions. It is well worth reading. Some notable paragraphs:…

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A creative response to Monopoly

May 24, 2013
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A creative response to Monopoly

Brian Van Slyke is a worker-owner at the Toolbox for Education and Social Activism (TESA), which creates educational resources on social change and cooperative movements. One of his coolest projects is a radical re-doing of the board game “Monopoly,” which has given generations of kids great fun while teaching them all the wrong values. The version of capitalism presented in Monopoly–grab all the wealth, make others pay, and leave them in financial ruin–is in fact a massive social problem, one of the greatest problems confronting humanity. Enter Brian Van Slyke, who wanted to create a fun game that could get…

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Wealth inequality in America

April 24, 2013
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The following short video recently went viral and received more than 5.5 million views on YouTube. Using accurate and easy to comprehend graphs, it showcases the full scope of U.S. income inequality. The video is mostly based on a paper written and published by Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, titled “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time.” It also references other data provided by a number of mainstream and progressive websites such as CNN, Motherjones and ThinkProgress. The video is receiving interesting responses from conservative and neo-liberals, who either challenge the accuracy of the video or attempt…

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Keeping the public in the dark about animal cruelty

March 18, 2013
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Keeping the public in the dark about animal cruelty

The picture below comes from a 2010 video provided by the US Humane Society showing a slaughterhouse worker in California forcing a “downed” cow onto its feet by ramming it with the blades of a forklift. According to this news piece in the Associated Press, the video led to the largest meat recall in US history.  The massive meat recall occasioned by this video clearly shows that many people are disgusted by the cruelty its depicts. And consumers obviously want to know, or at least have the right to know, the conditions in which their meat is being raised. In…

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Mondragon Corporation

January 31, 2013
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While technically a corporation, Mondragon is actually federation of worker cooperatives operating mainly in the Basque country. Quite different from the typical capitalist corporation, it is one of the most promising developments in area of business management. It was founded in 1956 by a progressive Catholic priest named José María Arizmendiarrieta, who had a mission to spread a form of humanist teaching emphasizing solidarity and participation. From the outset, the purpose of Mondragon was not simply to earn profits, but to provide employment and other social benefits to the local community. It is now the largest business group in the Basque…

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The ten myths of Israel

December 11, 2012
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Ilan Pappe, the Jewish historian and professor at Exeter University in the UK has complied an insightful list of the ten dominant myths surrounding Israel, myths that  impede the understanding and resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The ten myths are as follows: Myth 1: Palestine was a land without people, waiting for the people without a land Myth 2: Palestinians resorted to acts of terror against Jewish settlers prior to the creation of Israel Myth 3: Myths around the creation of Israel Myth 4: Israel was a benign democratic state prior to 1967 Myth 5: The Palestinian struggle has no…

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Canada’s support for Israel

December 11, 2012
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First the bad news. At the recent vote for an upgrade to the status of the Palestinians (to non-member observer state) at the UN General Assembly, Canada went out of its way to demonstrate that it is as strong (if not stronger) a supporter of Israel and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as is the United States. It also made it clear to the world that the Canadian government could not care less about the morality or legality of the occupation, world public opinion, or Canada’s reputation as a good global citizen. Following the lop-sided vote, in which Canada…

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On most metrics, the US is a dog

October 8, 2012
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The provocative title of this post is not an opinion but a quote from a recent book by Howard Steven Friedman, a statistician and health economist for the United Nations and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. The book, entitled “The Measure of a Nation,” compares the US’ standings on a variety of metrics concerning health, safety, education, democracy and income equality to those of 13 carefully chosen competitor OECD nations: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain and the UK, all of whom have populations of at least ten…

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The US presidential beauty contest

October 6, 2012
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The good news in the 2012 US presidential election is that there are some decent candidates running on platforms that address serious issues, people like Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party. The bad news is that most of the American electorate will not even be aware of these people, much less know what they stand for. And that, it seems, is the primary function of the nationally televised  presidential debates–to focus attention, not on, but away from the real alternatives to the status quo in US politics. How else to explain the absence…

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Julian Assange interviews Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali

October 6, 2012
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The official description of 10th episode of The World Tomorrow reads as follows: A surprise Arab drive for freedom, the West’s structural crisis and new hope coming from Latin America. That’s the modern world in the eyes of Noam Chomsky and Tariq Ali, two prominent thinkers and this week’s guests on Julian Assange’s show on RT.

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Interview with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy

September 26, 2012
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Originally aired on GamaTV, August 30, 2012, Uruguayan journalist Jorge Gestoso interviews Julian Assange from within the Ecuadorian Embassy. In this wide-ranging and fascinating interview Gestoso asks Assange if the Wikileaks’ cause is worth dying for. Assange answers yes. The interview can be seen here:

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Anonymous leaks alleged governmental surveillance data

September 26, 2012
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The Anonymous collective recently released one million and one Apple UDIDs, the unique device identifiers used by Apple for its iPhones, iMacs, iPads, etc. Within their release-statement, Anonymous gave detailed information on the origin of these UDIDs, claiming that they came from an FBI computer. In fact the database they accessed had information on and from more than 12 million devices. Before publishing this information Anonymous edited out personal data such as names, cell numbers, addresses zip codes, etc. leaving only the data columns, which would enable users to look up whether their devices are listed or not. According to…

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Can democracy exist without trust? (TED lecture by Ivan Krastev)

September 5, 2012
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The following lecture is by Ivan Krastev, a political scientist and chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, in Sofia, a research and analysis NGO on democracy and trust.  Here are a few interesting quotes from the talk: Democracy is the only game in town. The problem is [when] people start to believe that it is not a game worth playing. And when we talk about the internet – yes it’s true, internet connected all of us, but we also know, that the internet created these equal chambers and political ghettos, in which for all your life, you can stay…

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Julian Assange interviews Cypherpunks (The World Tomorrow)

July 28, 2012
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In the 8th and 9th episode of RT‘s The World Tomorrow, Julian Assange is joined by cypherpunks from the US, Germany, and France to discuss the future of our increasingly digitalized world.  What is the ultimate purpose of Twitter, Facebook and other social media? What is the current state of online privacy and data protection? These are some the questions examined in this excellent two-part discussion with people who understand perhaps better than anyone else the challenges that cyberspace poses to human freedom. Part I: Part II:

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Taxing the wealthy (TED lecture by Chuck Collins)

June 30, 2012
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The Program on Inequality and the Common Good, run by Chuck Collins at The Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, focuses on the dangers that growing inequality pose for U.S. democracy, economic health and civic life. In this TEDx lecture Collins gives a moving and illuminating talk on the moral justification for reducing income inequality by increasing taxes on the rich. Collins’s privileged background lends to his credibility on this subject, but what really impresses in this talk are the stories of the wealthy people across the US who are actually willing to dramatically increase their tax rates. This talk…

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Stiglitz on economic inequality

June 30, 2012
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The issue of economic inequality has been receiving quite a lot of attention in the past few months–at least in the progressive media. This is no doubt due in part to the Occupy movement and to the anti-austerity protests in Europe, which have really thrust the issues of inequality and economic justice into the spotlight. More so than at any point in the last several decades, there is a real public thirst for understanding the causes and consequences of economic inequality and what can be done to reverse it. The Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of several academics who have…

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